Can you hear the kick on this track?

AmirH

AmirH

New member
My cousin who plays drums and started at the same time as me came for a visit recently so we decided to record for fun. He brought down his dad's drum set, which isn't that great, and I only had two mics to work with to record it. I used my nice condensor on as a single overhead and mic'd the snare, specifically because he had just replaced the snare head and said the kick sounded like trash. So my idea was to have him program a beat on the mpc, or even just program kick hits on the mpc, and have him supplement with live drumming. I have some partial snippets where that started to work out nicely, but eventually instinct took over and we just started playing without the drum machine and stopped following a grid as well. I invited Aaron (bass) and Riva (vocals) to join the fun and by that point had forgotten about the reasoning for my mic placement. This was one of the jams that happened. In retrospect, I really wish I'd put a mic on the kick!!! I boosted the lows on the overhead as much as I could -- can you hear the kick at all or should I go to the trouble of trying to tap in kick samples by hand? Another problem that occurred was that the vocal mic was feeding back, so I had to back off the gain. This was as loud as I could get the vocals without them sitting on top of the mix. She should have been in another room but it was a jam... is it pleasant sounding as stands or should I have her try to redo it? There is one part where you can hear I used pitch correct :fart:
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

I can hear it. Works in context, I can't imagine this needing a huge, punchy heavy metal kick drum.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

I can hear it too...its low but its there. It's a jam recording with minimal equipment...sounds good for what it is.

Piss off with your pitch correction though. Does not need it.

Just an FYI if you only have 2 mics for a drumset look into the recorderman setup, gets a great balance of the kit thats phase coherent.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

Thank you for the feedback. In the first video I found of the recorderman style they used a pair of sm57's and it seemed to work out okay. Very interesting. The Glyn John's style looks appealing. I really need to invest in more mics overall though -- not used to recording so many people at once.

Piss off with your pitch correction though. Does not need it.
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Haha. I only used it because there was a bum note that was ruining the song for me. I wouldn't have used it if it was only slightly off.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

For recorderman (and Glyn johns) it's best to use two matching mics. I prefer LDC for the recorderman setup, but 57s can work too!

I've tried both and prefer Recorderman over Glyn john's. The only real difference is the placement of the one mic.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

It's quite decent for some on-the-fly shot I think. Considering the kick, I think for this context it is underpowered.

+1 on the SM57, well, on anything loud. Also you can try to place the overhead mics to the front position, a cople of feet before the drumkit, hip-high. It will capture more of the kickdrum. You can find a sweet spot where the sound is balanced so the hissy stuff comes just as articulately as the boomy stuff.

If you don't have a decent mic around and just have some toy mic that can record something and doesn't sound good, don't hesitate to throw it before the kickdrum. If nothing else, it can still capture transients that you can use to 'program' some sort of drum replacer that can drive any kind of drum sampler later. We use it on albums with the drummer's own drum samples on rock albums in some form, about 80% of the time.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

That's sage advice -- I was under the impression one needed an actual trigger to do that. I currently only have three mics in my possession -- two sm57s and a u87. The others I had were stolen, and one of the sm57s is misplaced right now as well, so really I only have two mics. My cousin had to borrow the mic we used on the snare (Audix i5) so I could use my 57 on my amp. The need to add to the ol' mic locker is actually fairly severe if I intend to keep getting other people involved. But those placement tips definitely help. That was my first attempt at recording real drums and I don't know when I'll next get the chance to do it again, but I'm glad no one seems to think it sounds completely horrible. I think I do fundamentally agree that the kick is underpowered and hollow, but that kick also sounds like a cardboard box anyway. I wish I'd known about that technique... I wonder if one of my home-made piezo's would have done the trick.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

AmirH said:
I currently only have three mics in my possession -- two sm57s and a u87. The others I had were stolen, and one of the sm57s is misplaced right now as well, so really I only have two mics.
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More than enough, especially the u87. Some trigger programs can be set up to react to pretty much whatever you want them to. Set a low pass in the side-chain, you have a kick trigger. Band pass it to the snare's most prominent frequency, you get the idea.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

Also, depending where you live you can probably rent a couple more mics for super cheap.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

If you're worried about the kick - I wouldn't go too overboard with EQ, but use a lot of compression. I'm normally not a fan of using anything more than a smidge of compression, but if you're not close miking drums, you'll need it. You'll end up with something that has a similar vibe to When The Levee Breaks, but not exactly because: a) Bonham won't be behind the kit on your track, b) different recording gear, and c) the drum kit is in a different room setup (ie not a stairwell but just a room with room mics).

Another thing if you can - I hear a build up of low mids that makes things sound muddy together - as if the individual parts lose some of what distinguishes themselves from another. Try cutting the low mids, shifting the midrange focus more upwards, and/or boosting the treble on a couple of the tracks. The mix could be a lot clearer with EQ.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

Beer$ said:
More than enough, especially the u87. Some trigger programs can be set up to react to pretty much whatever you want them to. Set a low pass in the side-chain, you have a kick trigger. Band pass it to the snare's most prominent frequency, you get the idea.
Click to expand...

That's really awesome! Seems I have some research to do -- any specific programs you would recommend from personal experience?
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

Myaccount876 said:
If you're worried about the kick - I wouldn't go too overboard with EQ, but use a lot of compression. I'm normally not a fan of using anything more than a smidge of compression, but if you're not close miking drums, you'll need it. You'll end up with something that has a similar vibe to When The Levee Breaks, but not exactly because: a) Bonham won't be behind the kit on your track, b) different recording gear, and c) the drum kit is in a different room setup (ie not a stairwell but just a room with room mics).

Another thing if you can - I hear a build up of low mids that makes things sound muddy together - as if the individual parts lose some of what distinguishes themselves from another. Try cutting the low mids, shifting the midrange focus more upwards, and/or boosting the treble on a couple of the tracks. The mix could be a lot clearer with EQ.
Click to expand...

I'll see what I can do about the mids and will mess with the drum mix a touch more -- it is actually already quite compressed, but via parallel compression, and the overhead track isn't well isolated. Should be able to spend a little time on it over the weekend if not this week and will post an updated mix to see if it sounds improved on your end. Thanks for the feedback.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

And thank you Twighlight and Vasshu! I agree that it has a massive attack vibe.
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

AmirH said:
That's really awesome! Seems I have some research to do -- any specific programs you would recommend from personal experience?
Click to expand...
Drumagog is pretty much the king of that domain but there are freewares that do a similar job such as 'replacer', Drumtrig (which are super basic but effective) and KTDrumTrigger (which I like to call Drumagog lite).
 
Re: Can you hear the kick on this track?

Myaccount876 said:
If you're worried about the kick - I wouldn't go too overboard with EQ, but use a lot of compression. I'm normally not a fan of using anything more than a smidge of compression, but if you're not close miking drums, you'll need it. You'll end up with something that has a similar vibe to When The Levee Breaks, but not exactly because: a) Bonham won't be behind the kit on your track, b) different recording gear, and c) the drum kit is in a different room setup (ie not a stairwell but just a room with room mics).

Another thing if you can - I hear a build up of low mids that makes things sound muddy together - as if the individual parts lose some of what distinguishes themselves from another. Try cutting the low mids, shifting the midrange focus more upwards, and/or boosting the treble on a couple of the tracks. The mix could be a lot clearer with EQ.
Click to expand...

Here is a revised mix -- tell me if the eq work sufficiently cleans up the low mids on your end. I was able to hear it through some bass heavy headphones.
 
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